


Three

by captainbowties



Category: Metalocalypse (Cartoon)
Genre: Character Study, Daddy Issues, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, M/M, Physical Abuse, i do mess with the canon timeline and i will not apologize
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-05
Updated: 2020-05-05
Packaged: 2021-03-02 23:42:29
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,678
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24015400
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/captainbowties/pseuds/captainbowties
Summary: Pickles has fallen in love five times.
Relationships: Antonio "Tony" DiMarco Thunderbottom/Pickles the Drummer, Charles Foster Offdensen/Pickles the Drummer, Magnus Hammersmith/Pickles The Drummer, Original Male Character/Pickles the Drummer
Comments: 6
Kudos: 24





	Three

i.

The first time Pickles falls in love, he’s fifteen and angry.

He doesn’t understand the swelling void in the pit of his stomach at first, or even his own behavior around him.

Around Ian.

He’s one of Seth’s friends, a tall, lanky guy with curly brown hair and a wide smile. He’s the type of dude that still wears fringe vests and flared jeans, that Pickles would make fun of with his friends if they went to the same school.

Pickles starts buying pot from Ian when he comes over to hang with Seth, and somehow, even in those minute interactions, his tongue fails in his mouth.

It’s always awkward.

He hates it.

Seth sits down on his bed one day while Pickles is packing a bowl and scowls.

“You gotta quit being such a dick to my friends, dude,” he says, calmly but not without the ire of an aggravated older brother.

Pickles stays silent, but rolls his eyes, passing the pipe and a sun-faded lighter to his brother.

“You bought this shit from Ian, right?” Seth asks before he exhales and passes it back. “That’s what I’m talking about, man. He says you’re a fucking asshole.”

So he tries to be nicer, to push past the rock lodged in his throat.

He fiddlingly invites Ian to smoke with him the next time he buys, and the two of them lay back on his bed an hour and an eighth later, some shitty garage band playing softly from Pickles’s stereo.

He’s idly staring at the guitar case Ian set in the corner of the room when he’s pulled out of a daze.

“Do you play?” Ian asks, turned over on his side with a hand bracing his head, looking at Pickles.

“Nah,” he says quietly. Then, an amendment. “Well, a few chords. I took lessons when I was little, but dad wanted me in sports.”

Ian laughs. It’s louder than Pickles expected, with Ian’s laid-back attitude and his soft speaking voice. It’s sharp, like a dog barking.

Pickles has never felt more trapped. He thinks Ian can see into him, see the wide breadth of his feelings, see how he’s wrong.

Then, Ian’s speaking again.

“Yeah, man, I feel that. My ma made me play soccer for three years. I hated it.” He sits up on the bed and reaches over to turn off the stereo. “I’m not into competition.”

Ian walks over to the guitar case and unzips it, pulling out an acoustic guitar that’s littered with stickers. “Which ones do you know?”

Suddenly, the guitar is in his hand, and Ian is sitting next to him, almost too close for comfort.

Almost.

He fumbles through the dozen or so chords he can remember. He knows his face is beet-red, and he’s halfway bracing himself to be made fun of.

But when he looks up, Ian is smiling. “You’ve got an ear for music, man. It won’t take long for you to learn.”

And then, Ian is coming over three or four days a week, sometimes more, to teach Pickles how to play.

Ian’s good, and Pickles finds himself getting better quickly. Part of him would like to play heavier stuff than Fleetwood Mac and the Carpenters, but the rest of him is just happy to be making Ian smile when he learns a new song by heart.

Seth is pissy about it at first, with his kid brother stealing his friend, but he finds a few new buddies to set bottle rockets off with soon enough.

Three months later, when Ian’s hand is running through bright red locks and Pickles’s mouth finds a home at the base of Ian’s collarbone, he thinks maybe he should thank his brother.

The thought almost makes him laugh.

When Ian leaves town six months after that, determined to travel the continent on foot, he leaves his guitar behind.

“It’d be deadweight for the first bit,” he says with a smile when Pickles protests. “I’ll get a new one when I get where I’m going.”

“Where’s that?” Pickles asks before he can stop himself.

“I guess we’ll see.”

And then he’s gone.

ii.

The second time he falls in love, it’s Tony, and it’s just as simple as that.

He has a new guitar now, a Gibson Les Paul that he plays at all their grimy shows, but Ian’s is still safe. It’s in his apartment now, and gets tuned weekly, even though he doesn’t play it as much anymore.

He left home the day after graduation and picked up a new guitar on the way, determined to leave his family behind and shift gears into the fast lane.

The fast lane doesn’t take long to find, and soon, Snakes n’ Barrels are playing packed shows every weekend.

The fact that those gigs are in the shittiest venues in Los Angeles almost doesn’t even bother Pickles.

Sure, the music isn’t as heavy as the riffs swimming in his head, but it’s nice to have fans. And to be able to look over and see the sweat sheen on Tony’s chest as he strikes his bass is enough to make him forget any notion of darker metal.

He feels the same way he did at fifteen, drinking alone while Seth and Ian and the rest of them got wasted and laughed in the next room, but that sudden loneliness is amplified somehow.

He’s an adult now, independent from the small room in the split-level house that he called prison.

He spends most of his days sleeping off his nights, spent either shredding and wailing and sweaty and high on some stained stage in a crappy bar, or behind one, serving beers to entitled jack-offs.

When they party after the shows, he feels himself inch closer to the line he knows he can’t break, that invisible wall between him and Tony.

It scares him.

The knowledge that he could so easily set fire to the band weighs heavily on him when he wakes up. He remembers standing too close, looking too much, leaning too far.

Maybe he’s being paranoid.

Tony certainly doesn’t seem to remember anything.

As they start to get what Sammy calls “neighborhood popular,” with people showing up in their shitty screen-printed shirts and even being asked for an autograph a time or two, a switch flicks.

It’s as if his chest is bursting.

He has to know.

And when Tony says, “Sorry, man, I’m not… I don’t feel like that,” with an apologetic shrug, he can only feel relief.

It’s sad, later, but in a way that’s more like letting go of a rope holding something heavy after pulling with all your strength for too long.

Things are strange for a few weeks before they return to normal, but as far as Pickles can tell, the band is still knit, he and Tony are still friends, and everything is mostly normal.

Sometimes bombs are just diffused before they explode.

iii.

The third time he falls in love, it’s only for one night.

It’s their first bar gig in a while, after a short stretch of cushy stadium shows and exhausting festival appearances.

Their first album’s been out six months, and Pickles is finally seeing the light at the end of the never-ending tunnel called obscurity.

But this is different.

The bar is packed, mostly with people claiming they loved the band before it was big. It’s, without a doubt, the best audience they’ve ever played despite the size.

There’s a guy in a fucking polo shirt of all things in the front row. He looks like a dweeb, but he also looks like he’s seen God for the first time.

There’s a swell of pride in Pickles’s chest, but he knows there’s no room for God up here.

Pickles finishes the set with a solo that takes him to his knees, and it feels like the best high in the world.

He sees the polo shirt guy again after the show, once the bar’s cleared out a little, when he buys him a drink.

“Good set tonight. Really.” he smiles and adjusts his glasses, and it’s settled.

They spend hours talking about the music, the industry, the world and everything else in between. Pickles gets his name at some point, but it flies out of his ear like a shred of pollen.

He manages a band Pickles has seen a few times, and they’re pretty good. A trio of loud, unabashedly punk girls that he had actually thought about contacting for an opening act.

He’s smart. Pickles had met smart people, but those people were the valedictorian of his class, a few teachers and the asshole at Atlantic Records who wouldn’t sign his band.

Polo isn’t smart in the way those people were. It 's something different. He just can’t place it. Smart like a Bond villain, smart like a detective in an old mystery novel, smart like an ending coming before the beginning.

The conversation hurtles on, easy in a way Pickles hasn’t felt in a long time. Polo talks about his grandmother’s death, and they end up in a 45 minute dialogue about grief, and before Pickles knows it he’s talking about his dad, confessing things he’s never said aloud before with a total stranger.

Later, Pickles says something stupid, and Polo chuckles. It’s reserved, almost to himself, and Pickles knows. It’s easier to tell now that he’s older.

He has the best sex of his life in a hotel room nicer than his, and even though Polo slings his arms around him and pulls him close to sleep, Pickles waits.

He knows then that this is all too good, that it can’t last.

He knows that this will ache now, but it will save him from a far deeper ache later.

He waits an hour or so, untangles himself, gets dressed and leaves.

He doesn’t play in that bar again.

He doesn’t end up calling about the punk girls.

It’s better this way.

iv.

Pickles doesn’t quite fall in love with Nathan, but he almost finds more than that. He does fall in love with the drums.

With Seth, it’s like a roller coaster. Pickles hates his older brother’s guts. He’s selfish. Arrogant. Lazy. Entitled. Leeching. Cruel. They end up fighting every time they have a conversation, and Pickles hasn’t called him in months.

He doesn’t plan to, either.

Nathan finds him after a show, a sweaty rag in one hand and a bottle of Jaeger in the other. With a completely serious expression, this behemoth of a man tells Pickles that he wants to write music with him.

Pickles would never admit that he’d been looking for a way out of Snakes n’ Barrels for a while, but if there was ever a way, this was it.

The music comes easily, and the friendship does too, after a while. Nathan’s kind of a quiet guy, but he doesn’t mind that.

And the music, rich and full and loud and powerful, is exactly what he’s wanted to do since he was fifteen and fumbling through Dreams on Ian’s acoustic.

Nathan’s reserved, but he’s easy to talk to. They get along like a house on fire, but there’s no spark, not like what he had with Ian, and Tony, and Polo. There’s still something.

It takes a while to realize that this, what he has with Nathan, is exactly what he always wanted with Seth. They can talk about things after a few drinks, they can laugh together, they can spend all their time together and not get sick of it.

He sinks into their partnership and settles in it, taking more days off from Snakes n’ Barrels rehearsals and spending more in Nathan’s basement. It’s not like they’re playing any shows lately, just working on a theoretical third album that they almost definitely won’t finish.

He starts drumming, and takes to it like he’s been doing it for years. Within a few months, he’s keeping complex rhythms that Sammy’s never even attempted.

Nathan’s actually focused on the work too, which feels like shelter after a storm.

It’s felt like herding cats to get anyone sober enough to write back home. It’s getting grim fast. Pickles is no stranger to a good time, but he’s seen bands do this before. After a while, they implode.

He’s truthfully worried about Tony, in a way that he isn’t really allowed to be.

It’s easier than he expects to leave the band. Apparently, Snazz has been itching for more solo opportunities. Pickles knows, deep down where his ego sits, that Snazz won’t get those opportunities without a new frontman.

Still, he packs his shit, walks out the door and finds a new apartment.

He and Nathan are in the studio working on music, good music, for a few weeks before they realize that a few components are missing.

Before long, Nathan has a guitarist on the phone and Pickles is texting a bass player he used to smoke with.

An actual band starts to materialize before his eyes, a fucking good one, and he’s looking forward to something he genuinely thinks is going to change the world.

And then he meets Magnus.

v.

The fifth time he falls in love, it’s a mistake. He knows that before it even begins.

Magnus is attractive, in a way that keeps Pickles staring. Smooth, collected and cruel.

The sex starts as something to kill time, to write better music, to let off steam. It stays that way for Magnus, but Pickles finds himself sinking deeper into a chasm that never ends.

He tries to snap himself out of it, to focus on the work and keep it out of his mind, but it creeps its way in.

Magnus is different too. He’s an intrinsically angry person, and Pickles thinks maybe he always was, and it was attractive until it wasn’t. If they’re together, they’re either rehearsing, fucking or fighting.

It feels like an endless cycle that never ends, like Pickles is an ant trapped in a wash cycle.

He finds himself holed up in his room more often than not, avoiding Magnus and the band altogether.

Skwisgaar, of all people, sits down with him one day and they talk. Pickles feels like he’s only had small talk with him before this, but they drink and mess around with some of the songs they’ve been working on, talking the whole while like they’ve been friends for years.

Pickles feels like an asshole, but he didn’t know the guy spoke this much English.

“Magnus sucks,” he says deftly, a few hours later, taking a drink from his beer.

“Huh?” Pickles replies, almost startled by the statement.

“He is assholes,” Skwisgaar shrugs. He fingers an impressively quick riff on his guitar.

Pickles tries to latch onto the change in subject, somehow afraid that Magnus was listening through the walls. “Oh, shit, that’s perfect!” he points to the fret, feeling a little bit like a kid trying to avoid homework.

Skwisgaar avoids him, continuing to play. “You should stops with him,” he says. “Doesn’t even play guitars good.”

Magnus punches Pickles a week later, in the middle of a meaningless fight over the dishes.

Pickles takes a step back, somehow surprised as if every single road hadn’t led here all along.

A week after that, Magnus and Nathan fight at rehearsal, really fight, and Nathan fires him. He gives Pickles a look, after Magnus leaves the room, and turns that look to Skwisgaar, who nods.

It’s a relief to nod back. It's a relief to have a family.

_He never falls in love with a sixth._

vi. (epilogue)

Around the time Dethklok is searching for a new rhythm guitarist, they find themselves in need of a new manager.

Pickles ends up in an office, meeting a man named Charles Foster Offdensen.

“You’re not wearing a polo shirt,” Pickles says dumbly, almost unable to process it. The polo shirt has always felt like it defined him. Defined what they had.

Charles smiles.

_He doesn’t need a sixth._


End file.
